4AUG

Brussels keeps Google DMA replies sealed

2 min read

10:16UTC

The Commission's public consultation on Google's DMA Article 6(11) search-data obligation closed on Friday 1 May; Brussels has not published the submissions, citing Alphabet's right of reply.

← Back to AI Act fines arrive, three states list no regulator Jump to analysis ↓

TechnologyDeveloping

Key takeaway

Brussels has sealed the Google DMA submissions until the binding decision lands on 27 July.

The DMA.100209 public consultation on Google's search-data sharing obligation closed on Friday 1 May ¹. The European Commission has not published the submissions, citing Alphabet's right of reply. The consultation was opened on 16 April on the back of the preliminary measures the Commission served on Alphabet ; the binding decision is due Monday 27 July.

The sealed submissions are the only public window onto how rivals, advertisers and search-data clients argue the Article 6(11) interoperability test. Holding them back until Alphabet replies narrows what civil society and Brussels press can scrutinise before adoption. The 27 July ruling lands three days after the United States Trade Representative's Section 301 final determination on EU digital rules . The order in which those two outputs arrive, and what Washington says about tariff posture in between, is the political weather under which Brussels writes the EU's first cloud-AI gatekeeper remedy.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

One of the EU's rules for large tech companies (the Digital Markets Act) requires Google to share its search data with rival search engines and comparison services, so competitors can improve their products. A public consultation on exactly what data Google must share closed on 1 May 2026. Normally, the Commission publishes consultation responses so the public can see what companies and civil society said. In this case, it has not done so yet, citing Google's legal right to respond to any submissions before they are published. The binding decision on what Google must actually do is due on 27 July 2026. The sealed submissions mean no one outside the Commission currently knows the arguments Google has made in its defence, or what its rivals have demanded.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Consensus view: EUI (European University Institute) Florence School of Regulation's Pier Luigi Parcu argues the Commission's decision to withhold consultation submissions on the basis of Alphabet's right-of-reply procedural guarantee is legally defensible under DMA Article 34, but sets a disclosure precedent that weakens the Act's credibility as a transparent enforcement regime: the same provision is available to Apple, Amazon, and Meta in their own open proceedings.

Counter-view: US Chamber of Commerce Europe's Marjorie Chorlins contends the sealed consultation is consistent with standard European administrative law and no different from the pre-publication phase of an OFCOM investigation in the UK, and that reading it as a threat to transparency reflects a misunderstanding of how EU administrative procedure works in adversarial enforcement contexts.

Key tension: Whether the Commission's procedural orthodoxy protects enforcement integrity or creates an opacity norm that enables companies to delay disclosure of compliance arguments for months after public consultation closes.

Sources:EuroHPC Joint Undertaking·EuroHPC Joint Undertaking·AI Act tracker, Future of Life Institute

Mentions:European Commission →Google →Digital Markets Act →Meta →United States →Section 301 →Alphabet →Washington →Apple →Amazon →European University Institute →DMA.100209 →USTR →

First Reported In

Update #4 · CISPE moves first; Brussels misses again

EuroHPC Joint Undertaking· 7 May 2026

Read original →

Causes and effects

Caused by

DMA clock starts toward six-day AI Act collision

The DMA.100209 consultation closure on 1 May is the next procedural step after the Commission opened the Google search-data consultation on 16 April; the Commission's withholding of submissions advances the file toward the 27 July binding decision.

Occurred 16 Apr 2026

Read story →

This Event

Brussels keeps Google DMA replies sealed

The withheld responses are the only public window onto how Commission rivals and clients argue search-data interoperability before the binding decision lands on 27 July.

Different Perspectives

Germany (Bundeskartellamt)

Germany's Bundeskartellamt declined to open antitrust proceedings against SAP, the company disclosed on 30 July, in the same fortnight the Commission's EUR 890m DMA fine against Google approached its 21 September compliance deadline. A German software champion cleared domestic scrutiny while an American platform faces enforcement, in the same regulatory season.

United States (USTR)

Washington's Section 301 investigation into EU digital enforcement, opened 24 July, had produced no Federal Register docket as of 4 August, even as Dell and 1,008 Nvidia GB200 NVL4 accelerators sit inside the EU's own sovereignty-branded MeluXina-AI build. The absent docket and the American hardware inside a European sovereignty project pull the same relationship in opposite directions.

UK government

The UK's Sovereign AI vehicle took a nine-figure equity stake in chip startup OLIX on 30 July, its fifth deal since April, while the Cabinet Office's 27 July fact sheet named no accounting officer for the GBP 1.1bn AI Hardware Plan. Whitehall is buying equity rather than capacity, inside a department mid-rename to Business, Innovation, Science and Trade.

Luxembourg government

Luxembourg is covering half of the newly disclosed EUR 80m contract value for MeluXina-AI, EuroHPC's Grand Duchy build, with Dell Technologies confirmed as supplying 1,008 Nvidia GB200 NVL4 accelerators, a hardware detail absent from the earlier project description. The disclosure means Luxembourg's national co-funding buys a facility built on American silicon under a European ownership badge.

European Commission

The Commission activated its Article 101 fining power on 2 August while the Article 70 register it must keep current still showed a 26 September 2025 footer and blank rows for Denmark, Finland and Hungary. It issued no comment, though Article 70 puts the publication duty on Brussels, not member states.

China's Ministry of Commerce

Spokesperson He Yadong said on 16 July that Beijing and the Netherlands should let firms settle the Nexperia dispute through consultation, after a Dutch ministerial visit to Beijing. The conciliatory tone contrasts with the confrontational US trade response to the same fortnight's DMA enforcement.